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New Hampshire Panel Rejects Seat-Belt Law

BOSTON, May 23 — An effort to end New Hampshire’s status as the only state in the country without a law requiring adults to wear seat belts suffered a setback on Wednesday, when the State Senate transportation committee recommended that it not pass.

By a vote of 3 to 2, the committee recommended that the Senate reject the bill when it comes up for vote sometime in the next two weeks. The bill passed the House 153 to 140 in April.

Bills requiring seat belt use have failed in New Hampshire for years, most recently in 2006. But a coalition of lawmakers, law enforcement organizations and medical groups banded together this year to push the bill before the legislature, which is controlled by Democrats for the first time since 1874.

“We feel it’s the most cost-effective and simplest means of cutting deaths and serious injuries in highway collisions,” said Earl Sweeney, assistant commissioner of the New Hampshire Safety Department, which has endorsed the bill. “It seems like a simple act, to fasten a seat belt.”

“It harkens to the libertarian ‘don’t tell me what to do’ streak that characterizes much of our politics here,” said the chairman of the House transportation committee, Jim Ryan, a proponent of the bill.

Senator Robert J. Letourneau, a committee member who voted against the bill, said that he thinks that citizens, especially children, should be educated about the benefits of seat belts but that adults should not be required to use them. Requiring people to do things breeds resentment, Mr. Letourneau said, while encouragement does not.

“We can’t legislate common sense,” he said. “The point of view to put these things into law, to change people’s personal lifestyle, is not what I consider good policy. I trust our citizens to make those decisions for themselves.”

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Colin Manning, a spokesman for Gov. John H. Lynch, said Mr. Lynch had not taken a position on the bill and was talking to lawmakers about it.

The state would receive $3.7 million in federal money for enacting a primary seat belt law, which allows a driver to be stopped solely for not wearing a seat belt. The bill’s supporters say it will save the state $48 million in medical costs.

New Hampshire and Wyoming have the lowest rates of seat belt use in the country, 63.5 percent, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which supports the bill. Last year, 77 percent of fatal crashes in the state involved occupants who were not wearing seat belts, according to the state’s Safety Department.

If the bill passes, New Hampshire will join 26 states that have primary seat belt laws. All other states have secondary seat belt laws, under which drivers may be cited for not wearing a seat belt only if they are stopped for another offense. Children under 18 are required to wear seat belts in New Hampshire.

Under the proposed legislation, a driver would be fined $50 for a first offense and $100 for a subsequent offense, a steep fine that also has numerous critics, including the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union.

Representative Jennifer Brown, who sponsored the bill in the House, said the issue was not only about safety, but the money residents of a state without an income or sales tax would save in medical costs.

“Safety is an issue, but it’s not the only issue, it’s also a money issue,” Ms. Brown said. “The only thing that trumps ‘Live Free or Die’ in New Hampshire is ‘No broad-based taxes.’ ”

Correction: May 28, 2007

An article on Thursday about a decision by a New Hampshire legislative panel to reject a seat belt law misstated the state’s rate of seat belt use and referred imprecisely to its rank in the nation. The rate is 63.5 percent, not 49.6 percent. New Hampshire and Wyoming  not just New Hampshire  rank last.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: New Hampshire Panel Rejects Seat-Belt Law. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe